h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Blimey super you've only been on 25 minutes and your PS is already on pre-mod.

Could it be appy, Oetzi or another "live wire"

E G Mel, blicky - that superrouter account was an Oetzi one

Nope, I think it's more likely that either somebody pressed a wrong button, or the page was activated with unsuitable conted that was caught either by an ACE or someone following from this convo.

It's not on Pre-Mod either I don't think, it's just been yikesed.

Mel

As i was saying earlier ,removeing posters ID only confuses

GD - Simulpost, but that info would explain your comment on collective!

Mel

It may be iron maiden he has just posted on 70 lils ,we may never know?!

Oetzi.... I reckon it might be Apparition.

No it was *definitely* an Oetzi account.

Folk have been tracking his activities through the Collective and h2g2 for the last couple of days.

"If you feel a researcher is bad enough to 'warn' people about, then how about telling the people who can make a difference rather than character bashing them at every given chance?"

There's a fundamental problem here: the moderation is intended to protect the delicate sensibilities of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells". It does that by completely expunging anything found to be offensive - including *who* posted it.

The *problem* with that is that someone like Death-threat Della can post something appalling, objectionable and even illegal, and have all record of it removed from view.

Moderation eliminates personal responsibility, and people like her obviously already have enough of a problem with that concept.

Another point here is that I *have* on occasion yikesed things she's said. Taken in context, they're the most disingenuous lies and fabrications and I find them sickening. However - the moderators appear to either not take context into account, or simply don't care about the sensibilities of some people, myself included. As a result, she can get away with posting outrageous lies, even if they're yikesed.

However, in the main I have in the past preferred not to yikes them. Much better, I think, to ask an adult - which Death-threat Della claims to be - to take responsbility for what they say and expect them to explain themselves. MUCH better than simply getting some of their more ridiculous statements hidden. If that happened, she might retain some credibility, which would never do.

In summary, I think the moderation system lets inveterate liars like Death-threat Della off the hook, by allowing her to pretend that she "never said that".

Let's face it, she's already protesting that she doesn't understand how this current situation got started, and SHE STARTED IT with her "Official Complaint" and subsequent threat to kill someone (thanks are obviously also due to her sons for making her look this foolish)! When you're faced with that kind of brass-necked dishonesty, you have to see that moderating her would be playing right into her hands.

However, if moderation is the only route available, that is the route which must be taken, I guess. It's under protest though...

E G Mel,

that should of been U129960
(hopefully it will work this time lol)

lol I am intelligent enough to use other words but i am rather fond of the smiley, besides no matter how nicely i put things them that im on about are still offended when you point out they arent telling the truth or they are abusing the HouseRules to suit themselves

So you did read 'a little' of 'The aces Code of Conduct' thread, enough to form an opinion of your own? I agree it did get a little silly at times, but it was necessary to have it in an open thread rather than TPTB trying to get the thread either in email or shut down soon as! I think we all hope certain individuals have learnt from that but 'if' its agreed by anyone that rules were abused, why is it still overlooked? All i heard from that thread was 'we are all human' repeated every 5 minutes, like that makes up for abusing the 'badge' status, if that is so why have rules that are there for some and not others?

As for taking matters further, which was suggested in that thread funnily enough by a then staff member who 'forgot' to omit she was also a mod? Like you do

'Emails that contain contraversial material will always put people on the defensive'

Well i know you wouldnt be referring to mine that i sent as requested to h2 because mine got 'lost' didnt they? Of course that is not to say they werent discussed in the aces forum, i mean if they were though i wouldnt know about that would i because aces discussing such matters with researchers regarding anything in the aces forum would lose their badge right? lol Well not as the case was then but hey maybe something in the unofficial rules covered that

Natalie,
What an expected surprise!
'As we announced back in september.......'
Yeah i think we've all seen that well rehearsed speech before, thanks
'When that happens we can deal with things through the appropriate channels'
Im sure BlickyBadger will appreciate that, lets hope nothing goes 'missing' again, what a pain eh
Natalie, your most welcome to my constructive feedback, always a pleasure to inform researchers how well you operate
feedback/support/whatever.....Perhaps im on 'block'
'I'm not at liberty to explain moderation decisions'.
Just out out of curiousity, is that C+P'ed because i see that a lot in various threads

'The other issues you refer to occured months ago when we were both struggling with massive changes at the same time as we witnessed a technical problem involving the internal email addressess'.

You are correct they were ignored months ago, funny nobody mentioned the technical problems, i guess it was just bad luck they happened to be at the same time as i sent them emails though i do remember getting replies to some yikesed postings at the same time, but if as you say it was a technical problem, who am i to question your word?

'It might not be a bad idea if we all moved on from this'

Yeah maybe your right, a thread revealing breach of rules, deliberate misinterpretation of the rules, links to other threads proving 'certain' individuals to be liars, especially those with some sort of status on this site doesnt look good, but as i recall the staff/aces said the same thing then when the thread was active. Strange when i think back because Jim did say he was going to look into it but if TPTB dont think its that important then who am i to argue?

I emailed this site on more than 1 occassion Natalie, im sure it wasnt experiencing technical difficulties everytime, so ill decline if its all the same to you

Oh and thankyou, always have my fingers crossed for the lotto

Sorry to say this, IV, but don't you think you're just a bit off-topic here? I mean, what you're talking about sounds like ancient history. This thread is really about a single, very recent incident. If you've an axe to grind about the system as a whole, wouldn't a thread about that be the best place for it? Not wishing to censor, just to get the right things talked about in the right places...

Jimster,

'Just popping in to reply to this comment from IV'

Thanks im touched, its good of you to take the trouble, its been so long since ive had the pleasure of your posts

'As any ace will tell you, we then fed back our our findings and acknowledged problems that had been highlighted in that thread and elsewhere'.

Since that thread, of all the aces i do know, i can only think of 1 or 2 that id like to talk to, i particularly liked Manda's warm wishes that he took the time to post me - most touching!

You acknowledged problems? Thats encouraging, and after these findings you acted how exactly? By not changing the aces code of conduct and not following up on the rules that had clearly been broken regarding certain individuals? Im not being argumentative, im just trying to figure out what exactly you did in light of that thread

'We were determined from the start not to wade in and start changing things without consulting *both* sides'.

And as you say you didnt

'One area we did wish to revise was this idea of the aces being an unofficial police force'.

Good, im glad you acknowledge this because it was obvious to many that the 'policing' was not part of ace duties but something that was openly happening, only 'some' mind, saw it as 'throwing their weight around'...ive got a badge so im going to jump into your, and in some cases 'stalk', threads, a lot of the time causing problems that werent there! You have acknowleged this though so thanks, 1 job sorted I would stress again though i said 'some' aces, thankfully there are some good 1's on site, that are a credit to h2!

'We also went back and identified the emails that you had drawn our attention to'

Really? That was lucky considering Natalie said you experienced technical problems at that time with internal addresses

'What appears to have happened is that an acknowledgement of reciept was not sent to you'

Oh thats ok, i rarely get a responce off h2 anyway seeing as you are all so busy and understaffed, im still reeling from the fact you have actually recieved them when all along i thought they had been 'misplaced' and what with all those technical problems this is a surprise indeed

Just to clarify and in light of the fact you have now told me you have looked into everything, has there been any change whatsoever to the procedure for aces discussing with researchers whats been said in the aces forum? I just want to be clear, it would probably be helpful for aces to be clear on this too, it is ok for aces to discuss what go's on in the aces forum then? I only ask because im pretty positive the last time i looked at the aces code of conduct it said it wasnt yet you said you decided not to change the aces code of conduct, and i dont see any change shall we say in your ace list, im puzzled by this?

I appreciate what you say about not discussing decisions made behind closed doors so to speak but in view of all this dont you think had you of said something, all this mistrust and animosity wouldnt of built up? Perhaps that is something else for future reference you might like to think about?

'A number of changes have taken place in the last few months in the way we deal with certain situations'.

Can i ask what changes? Not to the aces code of conduct, well where then other than instructing aces (some at least), that they are not an unofficial police force on this site?

I did say in a previous post on this thread, if i was wrong in my assumptions of you and your word i would personally appologise to you, and righly so! However, other than the afore mentioned im still unclear as to what changes have been made in relation to the aces code of conduct and that thread which is what i/others asked for, could you be more specific and ill be happy to do so but i cant as yet 'see' any changes other than not being openly stalked/harrased and misquoted by certain 'individuals' who hold/held badges

thanks

E G Mel,

Youve had a quick look at the unofficial rules and can see many of them need updating, can we say for the record though, it clearly states on that page that the official rules are the 1's that should be followed, that isnt word for word but it is said clearly and concisely by the italics!

What gave it away in the end that you werent a bloke? More a question of whom, BlickyBadger was good enough to point out my error in judgement

With regard to your post to Jimster - here here! that makes a lot of sence, particularly in this case, a LITTLE communication would go a long way!

Member,

I know of 1 researcher who was emailed from h2 and told not to yikes so many posts, despite the fact he found them to be libelous/offensive, you might want to bear that in mind should you wish to go on a yikesing spree

for the record post:78 wasnt mine! lol

Member,

I think my original intention was not off topic as this thread is also regarding the rules or how they are/are not(?) to be carried out with regard to a certain researcher and her family, admittedly it did err a little off track but i was responding to posts directed at me

What i covered isnt exactly ancient history, more recent history if you like

There is actually a thread for what i mentioned but i replied to E G Mel and Jimsters points in here as their posts were directed at me in here

"isnt exactly ancient history"

Ah, but you forgot the calls for "bygones to be bygones" in amongst the "only human"s and other such blatantly one-sided platitudes.

Just to address a few outstanding issues:

IV-

>> Good, im glad you acknowledge this because it was obvious to many that the 'policing' was not part of ace duties but something that was openly happening, only 'some' mind, saw it as 'throwing their weight around'...ive got a badge so im going to jump into your, and in some cases 'stalk', threads, a lot of the time causing problems that werent there! You have acknowleged this though so thanks, 1 job sorted I would stress again though i said 'some' aces, thankfully there are some good 1's on site, that are a credit to h2! <<

I'm sure they'll be pleased to read that, IV. The issue with 'policing' is that in the past the Aces were occasionally contacted regarding site issues - if a legal case was in progress or a banned user was spamming the site (which was another issue that greatly hampered any progress on this matter) - and the only reason Aces were involved was because there are twice as many of them as any other volunteer group, and because Aces tend to explore areas of the site that Edited Guide-related volunteers tend not to.

The problem with sending in 'Meeters and Greeters' (which is what the Aces are supposed to be) is that it could sometimes put them right in the middle of a hostile situation that could then push even the calmest of them into perhaps behaving rashly or retaliating when under attack.

When Natalie and I became solely responsible for the volunteer groups, we knew that there would have to be some changes. But mindful of the reaction to the team's reduction in September we were careful not to do this all at once. We had to be clear about each step and monitor how things were working (and you might not like us going back to that time, but if you want to know why things have happened, it's inevitable).

The Edited Guide remains the No. 1 priority for the in-house team, and so it was the Edited Guide volunteers who received our attentions first. There was a very real need for us to look at the sub-editing scheme first. We contacted every sub who hadn't edited anything for six months and asked them if they were still interested in being a part of the scheme. Those that we lost along the way were replaced in a recruitment drive in January; the benefits were apparent straight away as the backlog of entries was rapidly reduced within a fortnight.

All of this took time, and was happening concurrently with the discussions in the Ace's Code of Conduct thread.

In reviewing the Code of Conduct, we realised that there was nothing in there that we felt wasn't still relevant. However, we did realise that the application of the rules needed to be revised - after all, we'd not been responsible for applying that code before, and we needed to make sure that they were applied in a practical way that could work for the reduced in-house team.

We acknowledged however, that there are some Researchers who appear to delight in baiting Aces, knowing that the Code of Conduct requests that they do not retaliate. We suggested that in those instances, the Aces concerned should - like every other Researcher - rely on the Complaints procedure rather than fighting back.

We also said that in the instances where there are issues or legal matters that might affect the site, we will call upon all volunteers, rather than just the Aces. This, we hoped, would reduce the pressure that some Aces felt they were being put under to 'police' rather than welcome.

We also asked them to stress the importance of the Edited Guide when welcoming newbies. We realise now that the migration of people from Telewest's services over to ours could have been handled better, and perhaps some of the problems we had might have been reduced had newcomers been better directed towards contributing on a more positive manner.

As with the Sub-editors, we lost some Aces along the way; some left of their own accord and some had to be politely removed from the scheme. But we saw no benefit in publicly humiliating anyone over this.

>> 'What appears to have happened is that an acknowledgement of reciept was not sent to you'

Oh thats ok, i rarely get a responce off h2 anyway seeing as you are all so busy and understaffed, im still reeling from the fact you have actually recieved them when all along i thought they had been 'misplaced' and what with all those technical problems this is a surprise indeed <<

You should at least get a response from the Moderators if you use the proper system. If you reply to their mail, and if the reply warrants a response, we endeavour to do that within a reasonable timeframe. The issue with your initial complaint was very ill-timed as a number of factors combined to make this a very messy and embarrassing situation. When registered Researchers use the complaints system, their complaint is logged according to their user name and number. Although these complaints are handled initially by the Moderators (who are a separate team), a copy of the complaint goes into a log folder that the h2g2 team can access. This is because, in the event of a serious complaint reaching us, we need to be able to follow what they call the 'audit trail' - basically the chain of correspondence. Last autumn, we began to notice that the moderation folder didn't appear to be quite as active as it usually was, despite people onsite saying that they'd made complaints. When we were unable to find your complaint in the logs, we assumed that this was because of the technical problem we were having. In investigating another matter, recently, I found three emails from you from around the time of the Code of Conduct thread. They had been mailed directly into the folder rather than via the complaints procedure and as such they did not have your u-number or name attached - which now explains why we couldn't find an email from you back then. As Natalie said, a technical matter. The emails appeared to cover much of the same ground as the onsite thread, which we had already acknowledged.

I'll add here is that our job is to facilitate the creation of an Edited Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything. Just as the Aces are not unofficial police officers, we're not here to arbitrate between personal squabbles except where they interfere with the running of the project. Although we have codes of conduct for each volunteer group, every Researcher is bound by the overall code of conduct known as the House Rules. We try to be as lenient and flexible as possible - you might scoff, but the application of the rules on the Messageboards is *much* more strict than we ever are here. It's the grey areas that allow us to be this flexible. We could tighten things up, but believe me, none of us would like the result.

Jimster

Thanks for that interesting post.

This is an open question, and I don't expect a particularly accurate answer - I'm just looking for the best answer anyone thinks they've got, so here goes:

Roughly, what proportion of active users of h2g2 are actively involved in the "Edited Guide" thing?

DEFINITIONS:
"active user" - someone who has posted something, anything at all, to any conversation thread in the last four weeks.

"actively involved" - someone who has written an entry and put it into Peer Review, posted more than say ten comments in Peer Review, been credited on an Edited Entry or sub-edited or scouted an Entry.

I personally have no idea, but I'd be very interested to hear people's impressions of what the answer might be, and why. I'd be surprised if even the staff could make very close estimates, because to do so you'd have to track the contributions of every single account

I ask only to see how appropriate this exclusive focus on "the project" is. I don't expect to see it change - even if only 1% of users actually contributed to the Edited Guide in any way, I'd guess that those 1% are keeping the site alive for the rest of us, since the Edited Guide seems to be what the BBC actually *want* out of this place.

Any thoughts anyone?